The de Havilland DH.100 Vampire was a British jet fighter
commissioned by the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. Following the
Gloster Meteor, it was the second jet fighter to enter service with the RAF.
Although it arrived too late to see combat during the war, the Vampire served
with front line RAF squadrons until 1953 and continued in use as a trainer until
1966, although generally the RAF relegated the Vampire to advanced training
roles in the mid-1950s and the type was generally out of RAF service by the end
of the decade. The Vampire also served with many air forces worldwide, setting
aviation firsts and records.

Almost 3,300 Vampires were built, a quarter of them under
licence in other countries. The Vampire design was also developed into the de
Havilland Venom fighter-bomber as well as naval Sea Vampire variants.

T.11: two-seat training version for the RAF. Powered by a Goblin 35 turbojet
engine; 731 were built by DH and Fairey Aviation. As an added note, it seems
like Australia and Switzerland were two countries who built most of the license
versions. They were also built in Italy and France.

THE KIT

To my
knowledge, this is the first injected 1/72 plastic kit of
this variant of the famous Vampire jet and is most welcome. I did a conversion
using the Heller kit many, many years ago and while it turned out well, I had
always hoped for a proper injected kit. Now we have one.

Molded in India, the surface detailing is nicely done, though it may be a bit
'coarse' for those who want Hasegawa-like panel lines. Still, I have no
objections to it, especially as we are not paying Hasegawa-like prices for the
kit. The cockpit tub consists of a pair of basic seats and control sticks. The
instrument panel uses a decal and has the twin gun sights. A nicely done rear
cockpit section is included and there are pilot figures for you to put in to
cover up the lack of seat detail. There is some sidewall detail, but since the
cockpit is black, no need to put much effort into it.

A nice part of the kit is a set of full intake trunking, culminating at a
compressor face. There is room in the nose for the required 7 grams of nose
weight. The fuselage halves do not include the upper section. Airfix has molded
the upper wings and the upper fuselage as a single piece so you do not have to
worry about dihedral issues. The tail booms are so designed that they are
complete and fit into notches in the rear of the wing sections. This should
eliminate the issues many have with alignment and having a seam to fill right
behind the wings. Landing gear are well done with the outer gear doors
incorporating the extention/retraction brace. You have the opportunity to
install tanks under the wings as these fuel-thirsty jets often carried them.
Holes will need to be opened to use them. This is topped by a two piece cockpit
covering. You can display the canopy section open if you so wish.

Instructions
are well done with color information provided by Humbrol paint numbers so have
your conversion chart ready if not using these paints. Markings are for two
aircraft, both in a base color of High Speed Silver lacquer. The box art plane
is a warbird flown by the Vampire Preservation Group. I can only assume these
markings were chosen in return for crawling around the plane to get data for
this kit. This has the scheme with the yellow training bands around the wings
and booms. I have no idea if the markings are accurate or not as a search has
turned up images of this plane with different unit markings. The other is one
for the da-glo fans with a ton of the stuff on the airframe. This one was
assigned to the 5 FTS in 1962. Decals are nicely printed and include a full
stencil suite.

CONCLUSIONS

So if you like Vampires and have been hoping for a two seater in this scale, you
now have a very nice one. I am sure there will be aftermarket decals for this
one as the kit markings are, well, a bit uninspiring.